On Second Thought

This is no typical mid-life crisis. Poet Priscila Uppal, faced with a very serious and frightening health crisis as she turned 40, reexamined her relationship to everything in her life, including her sense of what it means to heal. Thoughtfully and playfully, with Uppal's famous dark wit and intense scrutiny of the self and language, these poems debate with the tragedies and absurdities of life in the 21st century, leading Uppal to explore dramatic changes of lifestyle, philosophy, physicality, sociability, spirituality, and aesthetics. A stanch advocate of how beautiful life is even in the midst of fear and doubt, her poetry brims with hope and humour and the lust of embracing the world in its many misunderstood and even unwelcome forms of knowledge. From quantum physics and theories of creativity to energy healing and spirit trees, Uppal suggests a mid-life crisis is actually a desperate (and often comic) attempt to heal what may have gone awry and to open up to new possibilities for the future. In other words, a second lease on life goes hand in hand with second thoughts.